Field Notes: Webstock 2014

Reporting back from a successful Webstock conference in Wellington, New Zealand, Growth Engineer Dave Martin shares the view from down under.

Feb 27, 2014 @ 3:00 pm

Dave Martin

Every week, Automatticians — the people behind WordPress.com — participate in conferences, WordCamps, and other community events around the world. Today, let’s hear from Growth Engineer Dave Martin, who just returned from Webstock, in Wellington, New Zealand. Webstock is a WordPress.com-sponsored conference that attracts prominent tech and new-media thinkers from around the world.

This was my first visit to Wellington — a great little city filled with good art, good food, and good people. The morning I arrived, I tagged along with some other Webstock speakers and sponsors to visit Boomrock, a lovely ranch overlooking the Tasman Sea. We shot shotguns, we threw knives, and then we hung out the rest of the evening. With a backdrop like this, it was all a bit surreal, and magical.

The view from Boomrock, near Wellington, New Zealand.

The event itself was wonderful as well. Scott Berkun kicked things off as the first speaker. He talked about his year working at Automattic. Scott’s talk spawned a bunch of great conversations with a variety of people.

A WordPress.com booth doubling as an ice cream stand? Unbeatable.

Overall, it was a fantastic event. I met a lot of great people, and had a bunch of memorable experiences.

Speaking of memorable experiences: a minor suggestion to my future self (and anyone else reading this). If you’re out of the country, and you happen to shoot guns, for the love of all things holy don’t place a spent shotgun shell in your pocket, thinking it’s cool, and then forget about it during your stroll through customs.

Oops.

Stay tuned for more news and updates about upcoming events! Next week, we’ll preview this year’s SXSW conference, and unveil our new events calendar.

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Actually I don’t think it’s very cool to “shot shotguns and throw knives”. Against who or what did you throw your knives and guns? I hope you did’t hurt yourselves, cause you are doing a good work @ WordPress. And I hope you didn’t kill animals too.

Thank you for sharing your trip with us! Beautiful scenery. You might also want to remember the next time you fly and shoot to check and make sure your clothes that you wore are in the belly of the plane and not carried on! This happened to my husband one time, made him miss his flight.

Alright, alright, allright! Just wanted to comment back to the rest of you who don’t know that shooting guns and throwing knifes is a game! unlike the hunger games you don’t aim at people or animals! just inanimate objects!